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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26262535">Becoming eternal: A passion in two parts</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsplay/pseuds/shadowsplay'>shadowsplay</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dark Shadows (1966)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Vampire Turning, Vampires</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:28:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,184</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26262535</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsplay/pseuds/shadowsplay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <br/>
</p>
<h4>BECOMING ETERNAL: A passion in two parts</h4>
<h5>Vampire Barnabas Collins gives his lover Willie Loomis the gift of eternal life</h5>
<h4>
<em>An excerpt in two parts from my novel <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/14868891/chapters/35337951/">Dark Shadows Play</a></em>
</h4>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Barnabas Collins/Willie Loomis</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Becoming eternal: A passion in two parts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b> <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/14868891/chapters/35337951"></a> </b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>After a bird tied by a string flies here and there without finding a resting place,</b><br/>
<b> it finally settles down at the place where it is bound.</b><br/>
<b>Similarly, the mind, after flying here and there without finding a resting place,</b><br/>
<b> settles down in the breath, for the mind is bound to the breath.</b><br/>
<b> <span class="small">~ Chandogyopanishad (India: 8th to 6th century BCE)</span> </b>
</p><h2>PART ONE</h2>
<p>I am Aedon. I am eternal. </p>
<p>I am the progenitor, and Cufure my supplicant; my sustenance, protector, and provider.</p>
<p>I was once mortal, a proud son of Cornwall against the Saxon scourge. My descendants, mortal, augmented the Franks, vassals to Charlemagne. My mortal issue became by inheritance keepers of an empire of forests, ruled by the Empress Hapsburg, peopling her lands, far and farther to the East, extending her influence and reign. </p>
<p>Join with my blood, and in my <em>mortal</em> line share with these mortals a common ancestry in me, by my blood.</p>
<p>Join with my blood, and in my<em> eternal</em> line share our long ancestry conferred to me by the blood of Morcant, who was my maker.</p>
<p>I write this now, the litany of our kind. I record this for you, our progeny.</p>
<p>
  <em>We have mastered the dark. Light is never extinguished. Light is never lost. We are made of light. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>To accept the light as your charge, you must kneel to the crown.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Swear to it now, that the light shall never cease. Swear that you will make one other to continue the line, one only, who will kneel to the crown.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Guardian of our spark, our light. Make this promise, swear to it on this, the auspicious day of the making of your own immortality.</em>
</p>
<p><em>Do you so swear? Sayeth this: 'yea," and live with us, who yet live, and </em> <em>know this forever: To kneel to the crown, we kneel to the light.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Willie was sitting beside Barnabas on the couch in his study, turned close to face the fire. They were reading from the books Barnabas cherished, received from his Ariadne, kept in their place with the crown. Willie still traveled through centuries of crisp and yellowed paper as Barnabas stopped to look into the fire, feeling the years coming down to this time, to this day.</p>
<p><em>He is searching for the secret,</em> Barnabas thought, watching the fire dance. <em>He is searching all of it.</em></p>
<p>After a time, Willie's hand with the book was falling slowly, his head tipping forward as he nodded, as though to sleep.</p>
<p><em>It is too much,</em> Barnabas thought, letting him drift.</p>
<p>Suddenly Willie's head snapped up and he stood so quickly that he fell against the mantle, knocking the fire implements over with a clatter. He was staring at Barnabas, trying to see him, <em>to see him</em>, as Barnabas looked back at him calmly without moving.</p>
<p>Willie was moving then, leaping over the couch and out through the double doors clattering, flying down the porch steps and far out into the snowy darkness. He was fully dressed, but standing in slippers filled with snow as he turned to stare back at the dark house, strange and white floating against the blackish blue distance of snow, the fire a bright square through the double doors still open, his dark destiny there within.</p>
<p>He was hugging himself then, tight against the cold, shaking with his sudden terror. He tried to speak, to name his fear, but he could not make a sound. At last his head was tipping forward, his thoughts tumbling inward, his eyes tightly shut. He was crumpled in the snow then, the intimate darkness of snow all around him, closing at the edges of his vision.</p>
<p>He was remembering. The huge yard deep with snow behind his family's farmhouse on the night of Christmas Eve, scaring himself by approaching the abandoned outhouse, dark and menacing under the scraggy old trees, with huge iron nails leaking rust, the weather scored wood curling and gray with age counted as the years since modern plumbing had shunted the structure's midnight sting.</p>
<p>Then he remembered... having never thought on it again. The pain of needing the outhouse at his grandparent's old farm, the well worn path by the menacing coal and tack sheds to the old structure stationed in the midnight wilds, far across the great yard in the slivered moon darkness. He felt a silent hiss from the structure as he approached, a thing once benign in daylight, now breathing, alive without movement, pitch black within as his feet moved forward by measured increments, as he reached to the door hanging open to a certain width and depth measured by fear.</p>
<p>The horror, the horror he felt as he pulled the door back slowly. He knew there was a blackness down there, just visible in the hole in wood much older than he. It knew that he was close. It was waiting for him, a silence of pure menace below all the world, the forever silence of darkness waiting at the bottom of a future grave, undug, his own.</p>
<p>It could claw him when he got close, when he touched that darkness. He pictured it shooting upward as a grisly, twisted hand, pulling him down to forever.</p>
<p>His child body was rigid then, clamped about a chemical cold that sucked at his breath as he forced himself to climb up into the outhouse and sit upon that darkness, his eyes tightly shut as he stopped breathing, as he did not move at all, hiding in stillness on that oval gateway to the place where light could not go. <em>There is a place where light cannot go. Not ever.</em></p>
<p>Then. He was tearing away from that black pit, crunching wildly across the frozen yard, holding his pajama bottoms around his hips with all might and force as he plunged back into the familiar house, not touching the floor in the bedroom as he landed on the bed, shivering under the covers with his heart pounding and blood in his mouth from biting his tongue.</p>
<p>He had touched the darkness. The darkness was alive. It waited for him, forever.</p>
<p>It was real, and it knew his name. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Willie had shouldered the enveloping darkness, a heavy warmth. The cold beneath his feet crunched as he shifted slightly on frozen feet. He lifted his head, and the thick cloak fell back onto his shoulders. He could see Barnabas' leg next to him, and remembered where he was, out in the night, now covered by Barnabas' cloak, shielded against the bitter cold.</p>
<p>Willie grabbed onto Barnabas' leg. Barnabas closed his eyes, his body steady, listening to Willie's anguish.</p>
<p>"Oh, my love.... oh, my love.... my love, my love...." Willie was breathing again, the cold air a sting of poison with each gulp of breath.</p>
<p><em>"It was the last time</em>.... my Barnabas, you were inside my body <em>still human</em>... the last time, the last time forever.... how did I not know?" </p>
<p>Barnabas' eyes were closed. He was silent, listening, listening to Willie's anguish. <em>He is already there mentally, between mortality and forever.</em></p>
<p>"I need more time, I thought I had time. Time to say no, to go back, my love... Oh, oh... but it's too late.... too late...." he sobbed with tears, the last of his mortal tears. "I cannot! I CANNOT!! Please take all of me, Barnabas. Take all of my blood, take all of me into you forever, let <em>me</em> be no more... only you. I beg of you. Please... please... please... please........"</p>
<p>Barnabas' eyes remained closed, his presence a silence of anguish, bracing his body strong and still as Willie pushed and pulled and tore against his leg with all violence, grasping and fighting him without letting go.</p>
<p>
  <em>"No... no... no... no......"</em>
</p>
<p>Willie was sobbing, still sobbing, quietly at last, then finding an imperfect silence. His wrenching dance against Barnabas had become a loose embrace. His head was falling, sinking deeper, down down into the private darkness of snow at Barnabas' feet, finding them shoeless and cold as stone against his face.</p>
<p>Willie felt it then, an unseen shift between two parts of him, grasping anew as his entire being dropped inside, finding the center place, the place where his soul was now tethered, fully; where it came to rest, forever.</p>
<p><em>"Ohh......."</em> Willie lifted his head, the snow falling from his head as he looked around at a brighter darkness.</p>
<p>And Barnabas was leaning down, lifting his Willie, curling and gentling him against his breast, carrying him back into the house. He laid him so tenderly on the couch, brushing the snow away, arranging the cloak about him, a sweet and gentle child who was silent and drifting in a magical state at the edges of sleep, where his mind could remain stilled.</p>
<p>Barnabas closed the doors and built up the fire, rewarming the room. Then he carefully gathered the precious books and set them aside for his Willie. All but one.</p>
<p>He removed his clothes, folding them neatly, wearing only his formal dressing gown. He felt the heavy brocade lined with the softest of silk, fabric that had touched him as he embraced his George, as he was embraced by his Ariadne, her arms his only anchor in the wild darkness of forever. Then he settled onto the couch at Willie's feet, the book in his hand, watching the flames as he waited.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Willie awoke, his eyes lazy, the flames hypnotic; the warmth so familiar, the crackling sounds so sharp and close, immediate and soothing.</p>
<p>He sat up slowly, gingerly settling against his Barnabas now sitting beside him. Willie still looked at the fire, his thoughts soft and drifting as he laid his hand upon his Barnabas' hand relaxed and reassuring on his leg, then moved his fingers to toy with his sleeve.</p>
<p>Willie realized Barnabas was naked under his dressing gown. He somehow realized again that his lover was so close, sitting at his side. He turned his eyes to his, so near, finding the most tender brightness of feeling there.</p>
<p>Willie felt his neck. There was no bite there. Barnabas was waiting, sitting next to him.</p>
<p>"The last time..." Barnabas whispered to Willie.<em> Our last mortal kiss, the kiss of your blood made mine, becoming me.</em></p>
<p>"I will make of your last portion of me into a beautiful memory," Willie answered, turning his head, whispering love as Barnabas leaned to him, as he felt Barnabas' teeth at his throat, felt Barnabas entering him, taking his subtle essence, taking the best of him, kissing him closed again, a perfect round.</p>
<p><em>The last time,</em> Willie thought as he was still in Barnabas' arms. It was beautiful. It was perfect.</p>
<p>Barnabas let Willie go, still sitting beside him, gazing at Willie as he sat back from their embrace.</p>
<p>Barnabas had turned so he could more fully look at Willie with great care, brushing his hair back with his hand relaxed and tender, memorizing his features as a mortal, the light in his eyes, the certain, soft pink of his lips, the soft texture and color of his honey skin. He felt himself fully enchanted again by him in every way, loving him, wanting then to somehow hold the last of his mortal breath as it left his body. He leaned to Willie and covered his mouth, gently squeezing his body, taking in his exhalation.</p>
<p>Barnabas closed his eyes, felt within him the breath of his beloved, and throughout him the liquid form and flow of his beloved's mortality coursing through him, warm and strong, finding every passage and secret place served by life, by his life, his beloved Willie. Now would that sweet flow turn back to him, mingled with the liquid flow of his own immortality.</p>
<p>Barnabas opened his eyes. Willie's eyes were soft for him, his head moving about <em>so so slightly</em>, changing for Willie the perspective of Barnabas' face, making it more subtle, his mortal view of him, a memory with a subtle depth to carry in the subtle depths of the wrappings of his heart.</p>
<p>Barnabas paused. He felt his Willie's eyes' caress, still lit from within by the light of his mortal soul. He loved this mortality in him, so precious. It would now be lost, taken into another life, equally precious.<em> Why must I change him? No... not forever...</em> Barnabas fought with his own anguish. <em>Why not only for a day? </em></p>
<p>He felt a silent answer, another, and one more. The remaining words of his George in his waistcoat pocket, a sweet and bitter memory enclosed by brass. His Ariadne rising up in him, alive in his veins, made of copper, made of light, urging him to pass on the gift.</p>
<p>The crown. For the lineage he was crowned, and his oath now a silent answer of blood, long avowed. <em>You must.</em> </p>
<p>
  <em>I must. I must make one other.</em>
</p>
<p>He was still looking down at his Willie. It had all taken seconds.</p>
<p>Barnabas pulled his dressing gown aside, revealing his naked breast. He brought forth the small knife, placing it on his open palm, bright and flashing in the firelight. He took Willie's open hand, and placed it on the knife, watching his beautiful hand, his flesh closing about the handle instinctively. Then he placed his other hand over Willie's and brought the knife to his chest, above his nipple. </p>
<p>His hand was firm and the cut was quick and long, with an immediate issue of vibrant blue as Barnabas pulled Willie's lips to him, gentle against his breast.</p>
<p>"Drink, my love, and become mine forever."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/14868891/chapters/35337951/">  </a>
</p>
<p>
  <b>I am a part of all that I have met; </b><br/>
<b>Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' </b><br/>
<b>Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades </b><br/>
<b>For ever and forever when I move. </b><br/>
<span class="small"> <b>―Alfred, Lord Tennyson</b> </span>
</p><h2>PART TWO</h2>
<p>Willie was falling. A thickness enveloped him, a substance that fluttered without sound at his ears. It was pulling on him as he fell, down into a place with no warmth, no air, no light.</p>
<p>Darker than darkness, he was solid upon a fleshy firmness covered with sticky and sucking filth, pulled by something that coiled against him, writhing against everywhere that he was. Horrible. Horrible, without breath, enclosing and coiled upon itself, consuming what it was, pushing against itself to go deeper, life that was feeding on its source.</p>
<p>Evil. Evil was eating of its source for sustenance, rotting to feed rotting. Like tearing wood from a house to warm it, humans had burned the source and treasure of their souls with a legion of blind addictions, with promised pleasures stolen from tomorrow for an increase of today, mistaking an expanding cascade of emptiness for endless, effortless freedom. They deceived themselves, feasting upon tomorrow's bounty until it was too late, and they were hollow as a crown.</p>
<p>Evil. Evil was pushing on itself, making more darkness in a lesser space, deeper and farther away from the living force that expands as light and breath. Humans had given themselves to evil acts which pushed inward upon their souls, mistaking the fierce cold and heat of their contraction for unending, effortless passion, until it was too late, and they served a perversity that hounded them to darker and darker acts, just to feel alive.</p>
<p>Willie knew the beast against him. Humans had made this evil. It was his inheritance as a mortal, a tangled morass forever greater than mortal absolution, passed from the past and from the many, on to the many more. And so it grew.</p>
<p>Willie was writhing and clawing at the black, coughing as a vaporous ether filled his lungs with stinging coils of dead air. He was suffocating.</p>
<p><em>Barnabas!!</em> Willie called within. He felt arms around him in the darkness as he struggled without breath.</p>
<p>"Willie..." a voice called to him with all feeling in the silence. "Willie..." It was the voice of his Barnabas. Willie stopped struggling.</p>
<p>
  <em>Where are you, my love?</em>
</p>
<p>"I am here."</p>
<p>
  <em>Hold me, Barnabas, I am lost...</em>
</p>
<p>"I will not let go." </p>
<p>Barnabas held Willie tightly as he began to arch and twist from new waves of agony that grew and tore at him, opening him with a ragged tear of his soul and imagined flesh, piercing his vital containers, emptying his heart and his lungs.</p>
<p><em>Barnabas....!! I am dying!! I cannot breathe!!</em> Willie collapsed again and again into weakness, writhing in defeat.</p>
<p>Barnabas grasped and moved Willie's body about, helping him to feel his close and mighty embrace, preparing him as Adriane had prepared him, his strength added to Willie's. Then Barnabas' head was falling back as he felt his own anguish peaking. <em>The fire will come next... Oh, I have done this to you... to you, my love...</em></p>
<p><em>Fire...!!</em> Willie felt everywhere a consuming fire that was burning inward, burning outward. He could feel what was in him going away. Each and every thing. This. This. Gone.</p>
<p>Then.</p>
<p>The fire was extinguished. It had burned the last of the fuel made from Willie's human inheritance.</p>
<p>The evil withdrew. </p>
<p>He was still, the struggle finished. A new fluidity held him, pouring through him from his Barnabas. He was flowing outward, expanding with a liquid coolness. He took one breath, then another.</p>
<p>He felt himself released into a subtle place of hidden light, a darkness with light somewhere near. </p>
<p>A light. A tiny point of light, blue and iridescent like a pearl. It opened and opened until he knew himself in it. He was substance and light. All of him was contained in this tiny orb.</p>
<p>Two, there were two. But then he was one.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Willie opened his eyes, looking up at a greatly relieved Barnabas looking down on him, smiling, holding Willie's head in his lap, his hands at his cheeks, caressing his face lightly with immense affection.</p>
<p>The unfamiliar room was filled with a wealth of warm candlelight. Willie sat up slowly, his eyes challenged by so much light, his gaze caught by the sudden gleam of the crown. He tried to stand, and Barnabas' helped him, greatly moved as he felt Willie's body against him, eternal like his own. </p>
<p>"I am eternal," Willie said calmly.  </p>
<p>"You are like me." Barnabas answered as he stepped back. Willie's new form dazzled in the candlelight. "You are mine forever."</p>
<p>Willie turned to him. "Your voice..."</p>
<p>Barnabas' voice was sugared with the honey of a thousand hives of bees, made with the thousand million flowers of summer. His words were sweet with the last sugar drawn from a million thousand leaves, felled by a single touch of the promise of winter, his rhythmic breath flowing as the sweetness taken up as sap by the bare trees as larder for the long cold, measured by moons, with a single promise of the sun's return.</p>
<p>"My love, my love." Willie touched Barnabas' lips. "Speak to me again. Your voice, your words....." Willie's voice was subtle and close as he brought his ear near to Barnabas' mouth, his gaze returning to the crown.</p>
<p><em>"I desired my mantle of dust to be mingled with yours, forever and forever, and forever."</em> </p>
<p>Willie floated on the sounds made by his lover, words of love and eternity made by a mortal poet, given to him now as a mingled eternity fulfilled.</p>
<p>As Willie listened closely to Barnabas' voice, he could hear <em>another</em> there, who was hidden from him. <em>He is far more complex than I realized.</em> "Barnabas. You are still a mortal, and eternal... and more than eternal." </p>
<p>"I am," Barnabas answered. "There is always more change for us; we live one eternal round, ever new.</p>
<p>Willie looked down at a pillow on the floor before the heavily draped table and the crown, with Barnabas now standing next to the cushion, holding a little book from the table, waiting. Willie felt himself sinking through the last of his mortal days, down onto his knees on a tiny raft, a pillow floating down through the long years to him, waiting for him at his beloved's feet.</p>
<p>Barnabas opened and cradled the book with great feeling as he found a certain page. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>I am Aedon. I am eternal. </p>
<p>I am the progenitor, and Cufure my supplicant; my sustenance, protector, and provider.</p>
<p>I was once mortal, a proud son of Cornwall against the Saxon scourge. My descendants, mortal, augmented the Franks, vassals to Charlemagne. My mortal issue became by inheritance keepers of an empire of forests, ruled by the Empress Hapsburg, peopling her lands, far and farther to the East, extending her influence and reign. </p>
<p>Join with my blood, and in my <em>mortal</em> line share with these mortals a common ancestry in me, by my blood.</p>
<p>Join with my blood, and in my<em> eternal</em> line share a long ancestry of immortals by the blood of Morcant, who was my maker.</p>
<p>I write this now, the litany of our kind. I record this for you, our progeny.</p>
<p>
  <em>We have mastered the dark. Light is never extinguished. Light is never lost. We are made of light. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>To accept the light as your charge, you must kneel to the crown.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Swear to it now, that the light shall never cease. Swear that you will make one other to continue the line, one only, who will kneel to the crown.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Guardian of our spark, our light. Make this promise, swear to it on this, the auspicious day of the making of your own immortality.</em>
</p>
<p><em>Do you so swear? Sayeth "yea," and live with us, who yet live, and </em> <em>know this forever: To kneel to the crown is to kneel to the light.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Yea," Immediately Willie felt in himself a little surge, a flow that would never dwindle. "I swear, and I do so kneel. I kneel to the crown."</p>
<p>Barnabas set the book aside. He reached to the heavy crown, grasping and holding it vertically in his right hand. He touched Willie's forehead three times with it. "Then. Now. Forever." He held the crown over Willie's head, then placed it firmly upon his brow. Willie felt the weight of the lineage, the exquisite effulgence of it, symbolized upon him as gold and as a lineage of royalty. Barnabas offered Willie his hand, and Willie stood.</p>
<p>"My love," Barnabas said happily as he embraced him. Willie felt Barnabas engulfing him with a sweet and swirling warmth that smelled like pears, and almonds... then mossy water. Willie stepped back. Barnabas' hair was still a crown of shining black, now with a subtle halo of liquid indigo. His hands were a lilting promise of movement, with the subtle motions of a resting pair of white doves, fluttering before flight.</p>
<p>Barnabas was entirely different to him. Then different again. Everything was different.</p>
<p>Willie looked around at the empty room, floor to ceiling. The table, the crown, the copper lit box had changed. It was all becoming real to him. <em>I am changed.</em> He looked again at Barnabas. His eyes and lips and skin were a different shade and texture. </p>
<p>Willie began to reach to Barnabas' subtly haloed hair, then reached instead to his own hair, bumping the crown. He remembered it there, heavy, steadying it with his hand.</p>
<p>Barnabas reached to him, and Willie tilted his head slightly towards him. Barnabas lifted the crown from Willie's head and placed it back on the table with great reverence. Beside it, the beautiful box with inlaid copper arabesques shimmered with many dazzling, copper colored beams of dancing candlelight. </p>
<p>"Copper," Willie said.</p>
<p>"Copper." <em>He misses nothing.</em></p>
<p>"I taste copper."</p>
<p>"It is why our blood is blue."</p>
<p>Willie remembered drinking blue colored blood from Barnabas' breast. "Not like royalty, blue bloods..."</p>
<p>"No. I will explain it all to you soon, but first you must walk about in your new world."</p>
<p>Willie watched the darkness that was pushed back by the candles grow and reclaim the room as Barnabas went about expertly extinguishing all of the candles in the way he had taught Willie, so they gave off no smoke. Then he stood waiting.</p>
<p>The windows were still well covered by the aging velvet curtains, and yet... Willie could see everything in the pitch black room, especially his smiling Barnabas watching his face as he registered this change.</p>
<p>Willie was moving towards the door, and Barnabas followed a little ways behind, waiting as Willie opened the door, watching as he moved slowly out and along the upper hall.</p>
<p>Willie could feel the moonlight trying to get into the house. </p>
<p>As they walked down the grand staircase, the last edges of the old carpet hidden beneath the new whispered to him of days past, trying to get his attention before he stepped onto the marble of the hallway.</p>
<p>"There's a lot of whispering," Willie said.</p>
<p>"Yes."</p>
<p>"I can feel the moonlight reaching to us through the house." Willie looked at his hand, expecting it to be illumined by the moon, but it was not. He could sense below him the sleepy, lotus steps of his beloved at his feet, a daily ritual path along the grand hall to the hidden back stairway, down to his coffin down below.</p>
<p>Barnabas stopped in the hall as Willie entered the drawing room.</p>
<p>Willie caught the fragrance of lilies, of camphor and whiskey, a heady mix. The older furniture had a subtle glow of bodies held and moments used.</p>
<p>The floor in front of the book cases had yielded to a barrage of slightly twisting footsteps, shifting subtly in long moments of interest and focus. Some of the books ached. Others were exultant. Some were like a port where the solid ship of history awaited its newest passenger.</p>
<p>Those of the old curtains which Willie had salvaged held memories of storms within and without the house, with and without the hiding behind or pulling down of curtains.</p>
<p>Willie stood with awe before the grand clock on the fireplace mantle, a creature which acknowledged him with a formal, silent welcome. <em>You have a soul</em>, Willie said inside. He touched the clock, and the face of It opened like a book to him, time trailing out onto the air around him, an account of many births, weddings, war wounds nursed, tragic deaths, and funerals attended by those secretly joyous and unrelentingly sad. Willie was spellbound by this parade of mortality. Then the clock closed, and it all evaporated as the clock was once again only ticking, ticking.</p>
<p>Willie turned to acknowledge Barnabas' happy eyes and great interest in Willie's experience as he returned to the hall, following upward with his eyes the epic curl of the grand staircase flickering lightly as a hasty ascent for secret trysts and feverish betrayals. He sensed the joyous steps of his George there, then saw his own excited motion and breathless posture from the back as George led him up to his room.</p>
<p>Below the stairs, a gilt heeled parade began under his feet, progressing by measured gait into the great gallery beyond, where came the sounds of tinkling crystal, and the slowing, fading measure of hearts that floundered, surrounded and aching by words of sinister gossip, watching the dancing and loving of others.</p>
<p>Willie turned about to face the inward sweep of the crystal laden doors of the front entry, happily mastered by a steady stream of servants in a fading timeline of uniforms, reflections that bowed to Willie as he stepped through and out onto the colonnade.</p>
<p>Barnabas came beside him, watching as he was stopped by a dazzling scene of a grand scale that was beyond any attempt at simultaneous comprehension.</p>
<p><em>"Ohhh...."</em> The sound died with Willie's breath on his lips, his eyes wide. He shook his head lightly. Again. It was all still there.</p>
<p>Silver moonlight swirled about the landscape like tiny interwoven rivers of sparkling, tumbling frost. The great stands of trees were so subtly shifting and shaping to face the house, touching each other with the physical whispers of a chemical language, embraced and enthralled by the sweeping reach of his astonished greeting.</p>
<p><em>"Ohhh</em> <em>."</em></p>
<p>Willie forgot Barnabas, and was moving with slow and slightly dipping steps down and away from the colonnade and the shade of the house, full into the liquid moonlight. He looked up, leaning back but an inch into the close embrace of his Barnabas ready behind him, holding him as his knees tightened, then dropped as the first of a cascade of muscle groups, each immediately faltering in turn.</p>
<p>The great bowl of the sky was flung from end to end with the epic edge and the lofting, outward spin of a single galaxy, their own, surrounded by an incomprehensible, endless flux of galaxies made of many several several hundred hundred millions of millions of millions of stars that whispered of other endless stars and heavenly objects in motion. </p>
<p>Willie touched all of it. It all touched him. Every celestial body was held to every other by the space between and around everything, and all of it was expanding in an equally measured and vast kindred of motion in perfect relation to everything else, rushing outward from the beginning of time.</p>
<p>"Relativity..." Willie whispered, understanding the concept for the first time. </p>
<p>"We can see back to the beginning," Barnabas laid a hand on Willie's shoulder as he came to stand beside him, his voice moving past and around him with his own endless, effortless state of awe.</p>
<p>"We encompass time. We have become eternal. It is who we are."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?</b><br/>
<span class="small"> <b>― Alfred, Lord Tennyson</b> </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p>
  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/14868891/chapters/35337951">  </a>
</p><h2>This story is an excerpt from my vampire themed, m/m slash novel</h2><h1>
  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/14868891/chapters/35337951">DARK SHADOWS PLAY</a>
</h1><h4>Over 1,300 Visits | Over 4,000 Pageloads | 26 Kudos</h4>
<p><br/>
<em>200 year old vampire Barnabas Collins lives in The Old House with his servant and lover,<br/>
Willie Loomis. Barnabas transforms Willie through his instruction and love, carefully developing<br/>
Willie's understanding of what it will mean if he chooses to become a vampire.</em><br/>
<br/>
</p><h4>Dark Shadows Play is a vampire themed, romantic, erotic, and explicit, m/m<br/>
slash fanfiction, with real BDSM sexuality, based upon the original<br/>
TV series 'Dark Shadows.' It is the length of a standard novel.<br/>
<br/>
</h4>
<p> </p><h4 class="western">
  <em>Two lovely COMMENTS on my novel 'Dark Shadows Play' (Thank you!)</em>
</h4>
<p>
  <strong>Comment by Lisa on Chapter 1 - Sun 28 Jul 2019</strong>
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<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>These are wonderful! You really capture the essence of the characters. As I am obsessed with Barnabas and Willie as a couple, these are so satisfying to read. In fact, they’ve become before bed indulgences that sometimes continue after I’ve fallen asleep- my dreams are marvelous! Thank you!</p>
</blockquote><p>
  <strong>Comment by chelldu on Chapter 4 - Wed 26 Dec 2018</strong>
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<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>This is incredible. I'm amazed at the poetry you sing, the scenes as so compelling and detailed, I cannot help but picture them as vividly in my head as if I were there. The bond between them is deep and utterly intimate, in a way only the two of them can unconsciously understand. It's simply astounding. It hits very close to heart in more ways than one, even though I've never met a vampire hahahaha. Thank you for sharing this story with us!</p>
</blockquote><p>
  
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